Book Review

Book Review of Future Legends

Finally, Future Legends has been published in book form. Now this was a project that took a long time to complete. I was talking with Michael (my Vice President) about projects for Jaded Silence Press back in October of '06, when he told me about a novel that his father had written prior to his death.


He told me that it was a sci fi/fantasy combo that his father had spent a long time writing and trying to get published. However, sadly, Edward wasn't able to ever see his hard work put into print. Michael mentioned to me that he had once found a copy of the manuscript in the bottom of his closet and since then it had been lost. Fortunately, he had emailed a copy of the file to his wife and she had it saved. How long it stayed in email form, I have no idea.


As we were talking, I thought that it'd be a good way to not only give Jaded more projects to pimp out and work on, but also give Edward his dream, even though he's passed on. I told Michael to send me a copy of the manuscript and that I would type it up onto the computer for editing and formatting purposes. He had his wife print off a copy of the manuscript at work and it came to 181 pages.


When I received the manuscript, I was surprised at the length of it. It definitely took me quite a while to type up, granted I am very efficient and confident in my typing skills, but even that was a task in itself. It took me about three weeks of consistently typing it up, what with working my regular job, and balancing out a family and personal life on top of it.


While I was typing it up, I noticed some story inconsistencies. For instance, the author often mixed up the names of the cruise ship that he used as the setting, also the names of the characters kept changing and I tried to fix all of those during the typing phase. However, even I can't catch all of the little mistakes.


After I had it typed up and onto the computer, I sent off the 19 chapters to one of my staff members Dawn Olexa and she edited the project for me. That process took quite some time as she also has a full time job and was working around her own writing and editing with her personal projects.


She sent me a few chapters at a time with her edits, I read through them, changed what needed to be changed and caught anything that she might have missed. It was certainly a long process but well worth the wait as it is now on our Lulu storefront for sale.


Now onto the story itself: I, myself, enjoyed this novel as it was certainly action packed, fast paced and the characters were likable and unlikable. The story takes place on the luxury cruise ship Constellation with our main heroes Nathaniel and Renee trying to get to their destination. All seems well for them at first until they find themselves meeting up with people from their pasts.


When the alarm of possible danger arises for the two of them and that their secret profession may be revealed, Nathaniel and Renee begin to scope out the passengers and crew members aboard the ship. They take their time talking to the people and learn things about them as they go along. Their journey to the Americas lead them on an adventure that neither one of them expected.


Soon enough while doing their recon work, they find themselves caught within a battle against certain crew members and passengers alike. Fortunately, they manage to get themselves some allies along the way to help them on their quest to finding out what is really going on.


With the appearance of Ughgru the ancient dragon, they learn of why they are fighting a battle and that they must help protect the world from certain destruction.


As I said before, the book is incredibly fast paced and it works well with anyone's fantasy collection. The battle scenes are incredibly well written and make you feel as though you're right there watching all of the action take place. A definite must have!


Lead Project Editor: Dawn Olexa

http://www.lulu.com/content/1238865